Night out with the Ladies

By JANE STEVENSON,
Toronto Sun,
November 20th, 2001.

Barenaked Ladies singer-guitarist Steven Page has a theory about
the staggering number of greatest hits being released right now,
including the Toronto band's own Disc One: All Their Greatest Hits
(1991-2001), which came out last week.

"Lenny Kravitz put out his greatest hits album last year,
it was huge and surprised everybody," say Page seated beside
BNL's bassist Jim Creeggan in a Toronto hotel recently. "So
everybody said, 'I want one of those.' I think the labels are going,
'We aren't doing that well right now. Greatest hits albums don't
cost us anything to make, or cost very little.' So they can put
out releases by major artists without having to invest the million-dollar
recording budget. And of course they want them out for Christmas
'cause it's the big time."

Page says a greatest hits release is pretty much written into every
artist's contract. In this case, the group decided to be as involved
as they could.

The entire band decided the song sequencing, Creeggan helped with
the remastering of the tunes, and Page wrote the liner notes. There
are also two new tracks: It's Only Me (The Wizard Of Magicland),
which is also being used in the video game NHL2002, and the single,
Thanks, That Was Fun. The latter inspired an unusual video.

Originally, Page and bandmate Ed Robertson wanted to just use BNL's
very first video, Lovers In A Dangerous Time.

"Our first video with our most recent video," Page says.
But when they took the idea to the record company, no one got excited
about it.

So instead, they decided to use all of their videos.

"Ed and I went into the studio, filmed our mouths and superimposed
them," says Page. "Most of it's pretty convincing. It's
freaky. It's a collage of all our videos as if it were done by the
Aphex Twin. It's creepy."

BNL launched their Intimate & Interactive special on MuchMoreMusic
last week with a vintage 1990 clip of them singing Be My Yoko Ono
at Speaker's Corner. It faded to the band singing it live in the
booth.

When asked if it feels like more than a decade has passed, Creegan
say it depends on how you measure it.

"I think when you think of the hard times, it's probably 20;
when you think of good times, it's just been a month," he says.
Adds Page: "It's been hard work, though, so it has certainly
felt like a journey and not like we just woke up, and here we are."

The band, which has sold a total of 2.5 million albums, most recently
allowed one of their early signature hits, If I Had A $1,000,000,
to be used for a New York lottery ad. Their big breakthough hit,
1998's One Week, is running in a Mitsubishi commercial.

"We'd been bugged for a long time about that," says Page
about approving the use of $1,000,000. "From the second that
song came out, people were like, 'Oh, we've got to use that song.'
We're like, 'No, no. no.' It kind of seemed sacred to us because
we knew the song meant something. I think what happened was our
resistance just wore down."

As for the Mitsubishi ad, Page says: "We're really into cars."

The band also agreed to be part of a Guinness sponsored Pay Per
View concert on Nov. 30 from New York City with a portion of the
proceeds going to the Leukemia Society. (BNL keyboardist Kevin Hearn
is a cancer survivor).

"What we're trying to do now is that if we do corporate tie-ins
and advertisements and so on, we need it to be connected to a charity
we believe in," says Page.